The Research and Statistics Department of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England and the Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology will be hosting the next annual Faith in Research Conference at The Mothers’ Union, 24 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3RB on Wednesday, 9 May 2012, from 10.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The cost of the day will be £45 (including buffet lunch, coffee and tea) or £20 for unsalaried postgraduate students.
After opening remarks from John Packer (Bishop of Ripon and Leeds), who will be chairing the event, the proceedings will begin with a plenary session on the ‘Experiences of Ministry Research’ being conducted from the Department of Management, King’s College London, with Dr Mike Clinton as principal investigator. This is a five-year project, including three online surveys of Anglican clergy, the first of which was completed in May-July 2011, with 2,916 responses (with further surveys due in 2013 and 2015). There is a brief report on the 2011 data, focusing on engagement, workload, burnout and growth, at:
An overview of the project as a whole will be found at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/management/research/experiencesofministry.aspx
Three more substantive sessions are planned for the day, each sub-divided into three parallel streams. These will comprise a mix of theoretical, qualitative and quantitative insights. One of the papers will be by David Walker (Bishop of Dudley), comparing and contrasting (statistically) occasional and regular churchgoers from the perspectives of religious beliefs, attitudes, orientation and practices. He has already produced some interesting research on attenders at harvest festival services in the Diocese of Worcester in 2007 – see http://www.brin.ac.uk/sources/2808
The full programme for the Faith in Research Conference is available at:
http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1378773/FiR2012programme.doc
